LRT has confirmed that Lithuanian representative at Eurovision 2021 will be decided by a national selection with the special intivation for The Roop to be a direct finalist of the competition. LRT will also transfer to The Roop all the funds raised during this year’s national selection for voice and text message votes – a total of 20.3k Euro.

Eurovision is gaining its popularity in Lithuania each year, that stimulates the creation of new songs and performances, and attracts many of those who wish to produce songs and perform them on the big stage. LRT has been looking for a solution not to deprive authors and performers of this opportunity, and at the same time not to deprive The Roop who lost a chance to perform their song “On Fire” at the Eurovision 2020 because of its cancellation. They stated that everyone is sad by this situation – the song On Fire was considered one of the main contenders to win the competition. It has received a lot of fans both in Lithuania and abroad, but unfortunately, they will not be able to perform it on the big Eurovision stage.

As a result, LRT has made a somewhat non-standard decision – they plan to prepare a new national selection, and The Roop will be invited to be a finalist of it.

We understand that the group has already invested a lot of time and money in this, so we also decided to transfer The Roop all the voting funds that were planned to be used in preparation for the Eurovision

Gytis Oganauskas, General Director of LRT

Gytis Oganauskas also states that EBU should announce soon the way in which they plan to honour the winners of the national selections and the songs which they should’ve performed at this year’s cancelled Eurovision. The Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT also wants to contribute honouring the acts.

Members of The Roop are familiar with the position of LRT. They understand that a variant was found that would suit both the broadcaster and the band.

Will we be involved in the screening, on an exclusive basis? We don’t know yet. It’s only been a month and a half since the victory of the song “On Fire.” Everything is going very fast. Too fast. We need to think and make the decision later,

Vaidotas Valiukevičius, frontman of The Roop

The Roop should’ve performed their song “On Fire” at the cancelled Eurovision 2020. Watch the video below

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